World Medievalism

Description

Explores the ways in which a range of modern textual cultures have continued to engage creatively with the medieval past in order to come to terms with the global present.

• Examines a range of texts, including non-European texts, not considered before within analyses of medievalism
• Offers an original juxtaposition of case studies that explore texts and artefacts from different parts of the world
• Develops an innovative approach informed by political and phenomenological approaches

About the Author(s)

Louise D'Arcens, Professor of English, Macquarie University

Louise D'Arcens is Professor of English at Macquarie University. Her books include Old Songs in the Timeless Land: Medievalism in Australian Literature 1840-1910 (2011), Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages (2014), and the edited volumes The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (2016), International Medievalism and Popular Culture (2014), and The Unsociable Sociability of Women's Lifewriting (2010). She has edited numerous special journal issues on medievalism and published many chapters on medievalism as well as articles in journals such as Representations, Screening the Past, Studies in Medievalism and Postmedieval. She is a former Australian Research Council Future Fellow and is Director of the Macquarie University node of the Australian Research Council Centre for the History of Emotions.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Medievalism and the Missing Globe
1:Medievalism Disoriented: The French Novel and Neo-reactionary Politics
2:Medievalism Re-oriented: Tariq Ali's Islam Quintet and the 'Arab' historical novel
3:The Name of the Hobbit: Halflings, hominins, and deep time
4:Ten Canoes and 1066: Aboriginal Time and the Limits of Medievalism

Reviews

"...World Medievalism demonstrates the capacity for medievalist imaginaries to cross geographical and ideological boundaries. Across four chapters, this accessible and generous book significantly adds to materials already published by Louise D'Arcens in article form and develops several of her long-term interests in medievalism and emotions (especially humor and laughter), the resourcing of the Middle Ages by agents across the political spectrum, and white Australian Anglo-Saxonism." - Fran Allfrey, University of York, Modern Philology

"World Medievalism reveals that scholars of contemporary literatures from the Middle East to the most Southeast of Southeast Asia have long been investigating many of these primary sources with their own expertise, and invites scholars trained in European medievalism to apply their skills and knowledge to examine these copious materials. It is an urgent addition to medievalism studies, consolidating the ever-increasing temporal and spatial borders of what counts as medievalism, opening up exciting, challenging research possibilities." - Fran Allfrey, University of York, Modern Philology